‘Scream Queens’: Doll parts

OK. I don’t know why Ryan Murphy is spoofing Taylor Swift’s insufferable, “WATCH ME SHOWER RANDOM FANS WITH PRESENTS AND THEN PRAISE ME FOR BEING AMAZING” Christmas videos. Chanel gifting some of her 752 Instagram followers with human heads, razor apples and boxes of blood doesn’t actually forward the plot in any real meaningful way. And it’s not like it serves as some sort of important character development for Chanel. I can only assume that maybe her “frumpy” Instagram worshippers will play some sort of role later in the story, particularly that one who screams that she “WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR YOU, CHANEL” there at the end. But you know what? I don’t really care why Ryan Murphy did it because it was hilarious, and I’m not going to look a zombied gift horse in its rotting mouth.

And bonus points if Chanel riding around in that toy car was a nod to the TSU student who drove around in a Barbie Jeep last month. A++++

But back to our actual story: Dean Munsch is sort of questioned by the cops. But despite Gigi and Professor Oliver Hudson’s protests that she is OBVIOUSLY the killer, the cops agree with the Dean that it’s improbable that she would be able to change from her nightgown into the Red Devil costume, climb out a second story window with a chainsaw, menace Gigi and Professor Oliver Hudson with said chainsaw, scurry back up to the second floor and change back into her nightgown all within 90 seconds. Which, to be fair, does seem like a lot for one person. (OR DOES IT?)

Unless they had an accomplice.

Anyway, Dean Munsch is unperturbed by the fact Professor Oliver Hudson believes her to be a chainsaw-wielding murderer and continues to leer at him.

And then Officer Denise bursts in for a little handy exposition: a frat boy was almost killed by the Red Devil when his arms were chopped off, and she’s pretty sure the culprit is Zayday. You know, because.

Meanwhile, Grace and Pete put on costumes based on Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey’s romantic masterpiece, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (True story! How to Lose a Guy was based on a book that I worked on back in the day! It’s a series of stick drawings! I’m not making that up!) and then drive out to California’s famous back swamps to meet the woman who was in the Kappa house the night of the birth. Never mind why they are dressed as Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, and never mind why Pete does a prolonged McConaughey impersonation.

The point is, Mandy, the former Kappa, happily offers up to these complete strangers the following facts: she was at the Kappa House the fateful night of the secret birth; after Mrs. Bean suggested they turn the dead Kappa into sausages, Dean Munsch orchestrated the entire cover-up; one brunette Kappa stayed behind to take care of the baby, and Dean Munsch hooded and then drove the other, blonder Kappas out to the middle of nowhere to bury the body; there, as they dug, she ordered them to drop out of school and never speak to each other ever again and not ask pesky questions about the baby’s father or the mother’s parents looking for her. DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. IT’S NOT YOUR PROBLEM. DEAN MUNSCH IS SAVING YOU.

As for the other Kappas that were with Mandy that night, she heard that one had killed herself, one is in an institution and one is doing really well on Fox News.

Oh, and as for the baby? Mandy insists it was a girl, so so much for Grace’s baseless theory it was Chad. (OR WAS IT?)

And then after Grace and Pete McConaughey leave Mandy, she is promptly murder stabbed by the Red Devil.

So at the coffee shop, Trevor Noah approaches Zayday about her interest in running for Kappa president, and offers to help her, for some reason. Because he wants to change fraternity and sorority culture? Sure. The point is, now Trevor Noah and Zayday are hanging out, making plans to throw a fundraiser for sickle cell anemia so as to score points with the seven Kappas who have a say in who the president of the sorority should be. All of this just makes sense.

Back at the Kappa House, Zayday announces her intention to run for president while she and the other Kappas are carving jack-o-lanterns for Chanel-o-ween (Hurricane Andrew, Charles Manson and Chad Radwell are some of the scary carvings). Zayday explains that she will be hosting a fund-raising haunted house, prompting Candle Vlogger to ask why, she could just tell them all she is running.

The point is, this news infuriates Chanel, who threatens to murder Zayday after Zayday reminds her that she could tell the authorities all about Mrs. Bean and her batter-fried face. So Chanel takes her fury out on some kitchen knives and with the help of Chanels #3 & #5 comes up with a plan to host a rival fundraiser for black hairy tongue: a haunted pumpkin patch.

As for Chad. Chad Radwell, when not bleaching his golf clothes and stalking the streets looking for serial killers, he apparently spends his free time wandering cemeteries looking for graves to masterbate on? Stay classy, Ryan Murphy!

Anyway, Chad is interrupted in his little hobby by Neckbrace who reveals that her, shall we say “preferences” also involve dead bodies. She then coos that she wants everything Chanel has, including Chad, before detailing her plan: Zayday will win the Presidency, Neckbrace will become her VP, and then Zayday will have an unfortunate spill on the stairs, at which point Neckbrace will be the new Chanel. Neckbrace then refuses Chad’s advances, insisting that they meet someplace scarier, promising to text him with an appropriately terrifying location and making backdoor promises. Stay classy, Ryan Murphy!

Professor Oliver Hudson is still teaching his film class, and he’s still showing second rate horror films: this week, Children of the Corn, before delivering a 20-second lecture about the terror of the inner child or something. After class, Grace confronts him about the fact that he never talks about her mother, before basically suggesting that she’s the bathtub baby, and that he’s the Red Devil out for revenge. In related news: Grace should probably start attending all those classes she’s paying for and learn how to use her brain.

Grace then meets Pete at a dilapidated house as part of their investigation into who the baby is, a house that Zayday and Trevor Noah also just happen to be scouting to use as Zayday’s haunted house because that’s how it works: You can just go into an abandoned home and use it for your own purposes and no one has any problem with this. Also at the house: Officer Denise, who, like Pete, has done some research into the property. They discovered stories of the “Hag of Shady Lane,” a woman who beginning around 1995, lived in the house, wailed over her dead children, filled the house with doll parts and stole people’s garbage.

Officer Denise then takes Zayday aside to reassert her theory that she’s the Red Devil, and Zayday reveals her own theory: that Officer Denise is the killer, seeking revenge on the Kappas for rejecting her back in the 80s. It’s as logical as anything else that’s been suggested.

So, then there’s this weird interlude where the Chanels and Neckbrace eat their lunches that consist of cotton balls before confronting two dudes who catcall them. This ends with the girls beating the boys senseless with cafeteria trays and trash cans while Belinda Carlisle’s “Mad About You” plays over the whole thing.

I guess this is Murphy, et al, trying to be all feminist or something, which in theory I have no problem with. Except. Except that this scene has nothing to do with the rest of the story, it is not true to the characters who regularly subjugate themselves to male whims and desires, and violence is not the most productive response to misogyny. So, no. I will not applaud this as some great feminist moment in this show. Try harder, Ryan Murphy.

That evening, Neckbrace and Chad meet up at Zayday’s haunted house where I’m sure she rented the space from the owner and procured all the proper permits to run this event. (OR DID SHE?) In any event, Chad and Neckbrace head inside where they find what they think are the life-like replicas of the bodies of Mrs. Bean, Shondell, Coney, Ariana Grande and Mandy, that is, until Neckbrace’s finger goes straight through Mrs. Bean’s leg, causing both Chad and Neckbrace to go screaming out of the house and to the coffee shop to recover. Even though I thought their whole thing was that dead bodies turned them on. BUT WHATEVER. SUDDENLY THEY’RE NOT SO INTO IT.

The point is, in the coffee shop, Chad warns the patrons to NOT GO TO THE HAUNTED HOUSE, THERE ARE REAL DEAD BODIES THERE.

“DEAD BODIES? COOL!” say the stupid college kids because of course they do.

And that’s why when Zayday, Grace, Pete and Trevor Noah arrive at the haunted house they find it full of students already wandering the grounds, marveling at all the gross corpses. Zayday tries to shut the house down and call 911, but both efforts are thwarted right before she’s kidnapped by the Red Devil.

Back at the Kappa House, Grace is trying to urge the police to investigate Zayday’s disappearance and in light of all the dead bodies in the haunted house, to shut down the campus. But Dean Munsch isn’t having it, arguing that the attacks have nothing to do with the University. After all, the attacks have been off campus, Mrs. Bean is not a student, Shondell is not a student, the 40-something Jane Doe (Mandy) was not a student, Coney’s beheading seems more like a coincidence, and she’s not even sure Ariana Grande was a student. And with that bit of preposterous exposition out of the way, Dean Munsch and the cops exit stage left.

A milk-stealing hag has to be less scary than a homicidal two-headed woman, right? (FX/Uproxx.com)

Based on this, the pair decide they need to figure out who this woman is, just as we return to the Shady Lane house to find Gigi in a black cloak, crying like a crazy person.

Right, so suspect time:

Gigi Caldwell: Based only on the information we have at the moment, and by her behavior at the end of this episode, I think Gigi will probably be one of two people: either the mother of the baby, or the Kappa sister who took the baby after the mother died (or “died”). Like Gigi, both girls were brunettes, but the bathtub mother looks more like Nasim Pedrad than the other Kappa. And all we saw was the mother’s body being dumped into an empty grave … we didn’t actually see her buried, so the mother might very well still be alive for all we know. Alive and mourning, perhaps?

Dean Munsch: While she certainly seems to be invested in distracting any investigations into the murders, I think she’s more of a target than a suspect. She’s merely trying to protect her job and prevent people from learning about her involvement in the cover-up twenty years ago. The killer’s motivation seems to be more about revenge than keeping people quiet.

Officer Denise: No.

Chanel Oberlin: Now, up until now, Chanel has seemed to be a primary target, not a suspect. But in this episode, between the knives, her fury at being challenged by Zayday and the violence aimed at the boys who catcalled her and her sisters, it seems the writers were trying to at least create a possibility that she could be a killer. While I do think it is entirely possible that she had something to do with Zayday’s kidnapping –she and the Chanels were nowhere to be seen at the time, and they were not invested in helping Grace find her friend– I think the kidnapping will merely be a red herring.

Earl Grey: On the one hand, for someone who isn’t actually a sorority member, he sure seems invested in its politics. Why? Why would he care who the president of Kappa is? And while I know we were explicitly told by Mandy that the baby was a girl, I wouldn’t put it past Ryan Murphy to add a racial twist to the baby story in an attempt to be relevant. That said, Earl was introduced formally in the second episode, not the first; so while I think he could possibly be one of the masked devils, I don’t know that he is going to be the primary killer. But then that is based on the assumption that Ryan Murphy is going to play fair with us, an assumption that is foolish to make.

Long shots:

Frumpy Girl(s): Who knows, on a Ryan Murphy show, it’s entirely possible that one of Chanel’s minions is a little too obsessed with her and her sorority, and it would help explain why they opened the episode with that sequence. However, the killings seem to be tied to the bathtub birth, not to any one particular Kappa member.

The Sexist Dudes: Similarly, if the killers were somehow tied to the jerks who harassed the Chanels it would help to explain why they included the entire scene. And yet, no. Not even a chance.

Candle Vlogger: It’s always the quiet ones.

Who do you think the murderer on Scream Queens is/are? (Choose up to 3)

SCREAM QUEENS: Pictured L-R: Billie Lourd as Chanel #3, Emma Roberts as Chanel Oberlin and Abigail Breslin as Chanel #5 in "Pilot," the first part of the special, two-hour series premiere of SCREAM QUEENS ... more